Monday, April 4, 2011

Victorian Trade Cards

The heyday of the advertising trade card was 1880-1900. By 1900, postal rates made mailing magazines cheap and most business people moved their ads to magazines.

When sewing machines were first on the market, they were used mostly in factories and sweat shops. Sewing machine manufacturers recognized women homemakers were a vast untapped market. Singer offered their machines on a payment plan, making them affordable. The other hurdle was to convince their customers that women could run the machine. The trade cards helped to persuade consumers (or their husbands) to purchase by putting the machines in familiar settings.

Ladies could sew together,

or with their family. This reminds me of those happy times with my girls happily playing at my feet while I sewed. LOL!

In fact sewing was so easy, even babies riding bikes could do it.

People were sewing everywhere, in the Sunny South

the Far West

in Italy

and Russian peasant households.

Even in Heaven!

And if you chose the right wedding gift

You could avoid a lot of heartache later on. The first caption reads, "I will have a 'New Home' Machine." and the second, "A 'New Home' or a divorce, Take your choice sir!"

Capitol City Quilt Guild

About Me

Years of quilting, designing and teaching have made me a great trouble shooter. Feel free to email me questions or problems and I'll do my best to solve them. I made my first quilt in 1974, then took a sewing sabbatical as I went to college. Work, marriage, and motherhood followed. In 1982, my first quilting class (with Pepper Cory) provided an escape from child care duties. I was soon hooked, not only on quilting, but on drafting and designing, too. In 1984 I began teaching quiltmaking. While teaching I wrote a series of Block of the Month patterns. Five years later they became my book Block By Block. In 1997, I published my second book, Charm Quilts and landed a job at the Michigan State University Museum. For the last 10 years I've been doing 1000s of hours of data entry for the Michigan Quilt Project and the Quilt Index. I continue to quilt, design, write and now blog. Welcome.